“Some beef patties, meanwhile, showed up with off-putting smells, flat flavors, and shelf-life issues.”
Hmm, I really wonder why 💁
Mmm, beet beef
Why are they trying to be fake meat anyway? Vegan substitutes rarely compare quite as well but honestly they’d be way better if they stopped trying to imitate something they’re not and did more to stand up on their own. All the good vegan food I’ve had was just being its own thing.
I imagine, they mainly don’t want to compete with the plethora of cheap+good vegan protein options: lentils, beans, chickpeas, nuts, tofu, tempeh, seitan, TVP, hummus, falafel etc.
Faking meat works as a market, because folks often just want what they’re used to, and then you’re primarily competing against real meat, which is much more expensive, so you can excuse quite a large profit margin.
At what point do these ultra processed foods become worse for our health than meat though? I love impossible burgers, they taste impossibly delicious so much so that I’m suspicious it’s really bad for me.
Dr Gregor has a good series on this, basically yes, these mock meats are not “healthy”, but they are healthier than animal meat. On nutrition facts, search for “ultraprocessed”.
Here is a good one about this:
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/do-the-health-impacts-of-ultra-processed-foods-apply-to-plant-based-meat-alternatives/?queryID=72e5918e6e7116a506973f670a82c4c6The Impossible burger isn’t trying to be healthier than beans and rice, but even as a processed food it’s healthier than a meat burger.
As reported in this study, the plant-based options had less fat and fewer calories. They would also have no cholesterol, which is only found in animals foods, and they may contain some fiber, which is only found in plant foods. A number of processed meats have been food to be carcinogenic while I don’t think any plant-based burgers have.
The book How Not To Die reviews scientific studies of food choices if you want a deeper dive… finding animal-based protein is correlated with a range of diseases.
So no, I don’t expect veggie burgers will be less healthy than meat patties.
Great news for vegan community. I hope other countries will do the same.
mmmm exactly what i want in my burger “Antibiotic-resistant bacteria were found in 40% of the beef patties tested. One contained genuinely pathogenic bacteria. The vegan patties? Zero contaminants.”
^where was this quote from? I didn’t see that in this article.
Thanks!
Was it a head to head comparison? The article looks a bit out of context
Generally, how these Stiftung Warentest tests work is that they a pick a product category, like here patties, then they come up with disciplines to rate them in and then they grade each product accordingly.
Some of the disciplines here were (translated by me):- sensory rating
- nutritional-physiological quality
- microbiological quality
- user friendliness of packaging
I would assume that they did a blind taste test and all that jazz, too. It is their business model to sell the data to industry, investors etc., so if their methodology wasn’t up to snuff, they’d be out of business pretty quickly.
So would have completely lost in a test based on “what tastes best”.
There might be an issue with not everyone seeing the same article text. Here’s what it says for taste:
Plant-based options scored better on average for seasoning, juiciness, and overall cooking results. Some beef patties, meanwhile, showed up with off-putting smells, flat flavors, and shelf-life issues.
The original source lists more rating categories and the source we’re getting it from is biased, so maybe some taste categories with opposite results are left out here.
But it can’t be too biased either, though, because the original publication from Stiftung Warentest is also titled “Vegan beats Beef” (“Vegan schlägt Rindfleisch”). They would not write that, if it misrepresented their data.
That definitely sounds like a rigged test. Lol. “Vegan burger is better than beef… Made with rancid meat”
From the original source:
Wir untersuchten gekühlte Pattys am Mindesthaltbarkeits- oder Verbrauchsdatum oder bis zu zwei Tage davor, die tiefgekühlten Produkte im Laufe der Prüfphase.
Which translates as:
We evaluated cooled patties on the Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum (legally required at-least-good-until-date, like a shelf-life-date) or on the use-by-date, or up to two days before that. The frozen products were tested at any point throughout the evaluation phase.
If the product has started rotting at that point, that is entirely the fault of the producer, since they specify those dates.
The article is totally unsupported by the test then as it says it is only about taste.
I am very confused. Are we seeing same article? @Captain_Buddha@lemmy.world below also seemed to not see a direct quote from the article.
Here’s the part of the article describing the results that I see:
The result
Vegan patties came out on top, and it wasn’t particularly close:
-
Overall rating
Seven out of ten plant-based patties rated “good.” Only three out of ten beef patties did.
The three top-scoring burgers came from Aldi MyVay, Garden Gourmet, and Beyond — and they were all vegan.
This is a dramatic reversal from the last time this test was run in 2021, when meat still held the edge. The improvement in plant-based products over just a few years has been remarkable.
-
Fats
Vegan patties averaged 43% less fat and 20% fewer calories than their beef counterparts — and the fat they do contain skews toward the healthy, unsaturated kind, while beef patties lean heavily on saturated fat.
-
Taste
Plant-based options scored better on average for seasoning, juiciness, and overall cooking results. Some beef patties, meanwhile, showed up with off-putting smells, flat flavors, and shelf-life issues.
-
Food safety
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria were found in 40% of the beef patties tested. One contained genuinely pathogenic bacteria. The vegan patties? Zero contaminants.
-
Price
The vegan patties were, on average, 20% cheaper than beef. And that’s before accounting for the massive government subsidies that artificially deflate the price of conventional meat. Without those subsidies, the gap would be even wider.
-
You can find more information on the Stiftung Warentest site itself.
Horse shit.
Look I’ve reduced my meat intake and have no issues with vegans. And I’m certainly not reading up on this. But their ain’t no fucking way a vegan burger beat a burger in a fair contest.
I feel like this shit is counter productive. People hear shit like this and just toss it into the ‘liburl lie pile’ mentally.
Has it ever occurred to you that some people genuinely don’t like the taste of meat and think plants taste better?
Kindly go cope somewhere else. This clearly isn’t for you.
“I’m too fragile to read the article but too triggered to keep my mouth shut.” Just fuck off.
You’re the only one here reflexively tossing it in the “liberal lie pile,” and even proudly standing by your ignorance by refusing to engage with the source.
And I’m certainly not reading up on this.
Then why comment that this is horse shit?
Because anyone who has ever liked the taste of a hamburger knows it’s immediately bullshit.
And I’m not spending time understanding how it’s bullshit.
The question was, “Why did you comment?” not, “Generally tell us about your damage.”
As far as I can tell, the report is based on the evaluation of five trained testers. So at the very least these five people, who aren’t even vegan since they had to test the beef patties, decided that they liked the vegan patties more than the beef patties.
Five people is not a lot, sure, but it’s more convincing than your comment that it’s bullshit just because.
And I’m not spending time understanding how it’s bullshit.
Again, then why comment?
Your taste is just this, your taste. People have other taste then you.
On top of that, taste is only one aspect of this consumer test and yet still, the plant based patties have on average scored better in taste then the beef patties
I get your disbelieve but you have to look at what they did. They tested convenience food, not self made quality products. They compared meat products to plant based counterfits. The good stuff is actually whole food that you can make yourself. You can’t compare a raw beef with a raw lentil patty since they taste completely different. But you can make an incredibly delicious lentil burger that is also very healthy and eco friendly. It all comes down to the recipe. As soon as you add seasoning, good meat doesn’t neccessarily win always for meat eaters.
